MudMan
@MudMan@fedia.io
- Comment on Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading 5 days ago:
There are definitely ways to send backwards compatible data when required and separately support additional features in a new iteration of an API. This wouldn't be in the top 10 backwards compatibility challenges MS has figured out.
But in any case, I don't care if they call it XInput2 or Game Input. I just need it to support all controller features in all games. It's a bit hard to tell whether Game Input will ever do that, but so far it seems more concerned with acting as a layer to explicitly support a bunch of different hardware, each with its own standards, than a XInput replacement for controllers. There doesn't seem to be a concept for a "Game Input controller" there at all, actually, just supported controllers you can listen for regardless of what they're sending through.
I guess over time if they stick with it and it does end up working as a Steam Input-style intermediary layer that just recognizes anything you'd just ship controllers that match whatever format with gyro support and Game Input-enabled games would just pick them up fine more or less universally, but that doesn't seem to be what it does right now, or at least not something that either games or manufacturers are relying upon.
Anyway, this was interesting and informative, but I think I'm good now. I definitely don't want to have a conversation formatted as an argument in which nobody is disagreeing with anybody else. Those are exhausting.
- Comment on Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading 5 days ago:
That's interesting, but considering this note:
We recommend the GameInput API for all new code, regardless of the target platform, because it provides support across all Microsoft platforms (including earlier versions of Windows) and provides superior performance versus legacy APIs.
For games developed on the GDK for Xbox One, GameInput is the only input API
I'm really not sure this would do what we both want it to do. If everybody has had a GameInput version of their controller support since last-gen and we're still getting limited to the XInput feature set I don't think it sorts out gyro-on-Xinput mode at all. I am not familiar with the behind the scenes of how modern engine controller code is handled, but this sounds like maybe it's how games with native PS controller support are doing that, but not necessarily a new standard that will allow the default XInput PC setting of new controllers to pass gyro input to games detecting them as an XInput device.
It does show that all the tools are in place. MS has control over all the involved APIs. They could expand the Xbox controller feature set tomorrow, whether or not they add the feature to their base controller model. They just... don't. And Steam could deploy a Steam-independent Steam Input driver or software to just take over all controller support on a dedicated full-feature OS layer, but they also don't (on either Windows or Linux, as far as I can tell).
Honestly, there are enough workarounds (add games as non-Steam games, use Switch modes and so on), I just bump against the edge cases of it often because I'm both a controller and handheld nerd, so I'm stuck with a GPD Win handheld that insists on injecting their internal gyro as mouse inputs, along with a bunch of GameSir and Gullikit controllers that do weird things with gyro, like injecting it at the firmware level instead of passing it to the OS. And I mess around with enough emulators to also end up with "oh, this was on DI mode when I booted RetroArch, so now all my buttons are in the wrong places until I quit". It's only dumb for like ten of us... but man, is it dumb.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 5 days ago:
I think they do probably think that having SteamOS perpetually be the holder for the "most popular" slot in the Linux category is not what the survey slot is for.
But then, they could have also finally provided a historical chart of OS usage, or a different category of SteamOS altogether.
- Comment on Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading 5 days ago:
Yes, I'm aware, that's why I'm calling out it's weird that XInput doesn't support gyro, because we're a long way away of it being just based on Xbox controller support and a whole bunch of other controllers with a whole bunch of other features now go through it. If MS doesn't want to add gyro that's up to them, but Windows supporting it natively is way overdue. Of course at that point older controllers would probably need a firmware update, but hey, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
In practice the situation we're having is games are defaulting to Xinput and relying on Steam Input as an intermediate layer for additional features, so the end result is that gyro is... not NOT supported, but often not acknowledged at all, so you end up with a bunch of situations where you have to config gyro manually per game as a bit of a Steam-level hack, and then your controller is all wonky anywhere other than Steam because the way Switch/DI/PS input modes get picked up in non-Steam stuff can be weird.
And it gets worse in handhelds where you're absolutely at the mercy of how the manufacturer decided to set up their controller and gyro support, and sometimes need to do a lot of weird stuff to pass it on outside of Steam.
It's the jankiest part of controller set up left on PC gaming, and it's all down to this weird "mom and dad aren't talking" dance where MS keeps pretending PC controllers are fundamentally Xbox controllers at the XInput layer and Steam is the de facto curator of the controller support but has no interest (and to be frank no expectation or need) to have their controller layer work outside their launcher.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 5 days ago:
Oh, hey, it is. Why the hell would it work that way? It seems to be manually excluded from the unfiltered list despite being by far the biggest usage.
So the data exists but it's weirdly buried for no reason.
Still, thanks for the pointer. I genuinely didn't know they had it set up that way.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 6 days ago:
I mean, you do you, but I don't see any of the things that you want requiring active surveillance. That all seems very attainable by having decent search, filtering and categorization tools.
If anything, I find myself now seeking "hidden gems on Steam" despite Steam knowing everything about my gaming habits. And that's on Steam, which does have a semi-decent crowdsourced tagging and categorization system. Their main page recommendations for e have consistently been either generically popular shovelware or insistent recommendations for games I do like but already own in other platforms that I can't tell Steam to stop shoving down my throat.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 6 days ago:
Is it listed? Do you have a link to that? Checking the latest survey the Linux section shows
"Arch Linux" 64 bit
0.32%
+0.01%Linux Mint 22.2 64 bit
0.24%
+0.04%Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit
0.14%
0.00%Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS 64 bit
0.12%
+0.01%I don't see a SteamOS segment listed as a non-Linux OS anywhere, either. If they do provide the info I'd love to see it, but it doesn't seem to be shown at a glance in the OS Version category.
Tracking game use by device isn't any more or less "crazy" than anything else they store. It's just telemetry. It's noteworthy that they share it in the format that they share it.
- Comment on Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading 6 days ago:
It's hard to fault Steam's controller layer, but I really wish they finally found a way to parse gyro data from third party controllers without having to run them on Switch mode. That goes for Microsoft and their own drivers. At this point it's weird to keep pretending the Windows controller APIs are supposed to work on their first party Xbox controllers only.
- Comment on Latest Steam Deck update will warn you if an Xbox controller needs upgrading 6 days ago:
I'm almost entirely sure that PS4 and XOne controllers did get upgrades at some points. Definitely Switch 1 ones, which matters or not depending on how you split the gens. There were definitely revisions in older controllers, though. Some were labeled and had obvious new features, some were quieter. And PC-side drivers got updates all the time, obviously.
Also, your current gen controller will also keep working indefinitely without an update. In this case Valve is annoyed about a particular dependency where THEY need the upgrade to happen for a feature compatibility thing, but the controller proper will work if you plug it in.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 6 days ago:
Nnnnah, the hardware survey is a wildly different number. That's what OS each account was using when they filled the survey.
This shows they have data on what OS each user is using at the time of running each game, on both a per-game and a per-hour basis and that they can tie all of it to each account across games and OSs. Which raises the question of why they run the hardware survey OS numbers in the first place, but I suppose if you're sharing the survey results you share the survey results, even if you have more accurate data on the same stats elsewhere.
That'd be a very interesting, very different stat, though, because it means they know what percentage of Windows/Linux users go back and forth, and CAN separate Linux usage from Deck from other OSs, which they very pointedly do not do on the survey, where SteamOS doesn't have its own entry. That's unsurprising but notable, along with the fact that they don't really report on their own hardware sales, either, despite being a main source of info about GPU and CPU vendors.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 6 days ago:
I'd say I'm more lenient about big data profiles than most people around here. I'd also say I understand why the reaction to the very real, very obvious overreach in the process of creating and using those profiles is radically opposed to any sort of personal recorded info.
The part that's weird is the cute little exception we make around the December holidays to get weirdly invasive infographics to share on social media.
For the record, I'd dispute that I prefer personalized recs to general ads. I already know the things I like that I want to buy. I'd much rather get a poke on things "I'd never consider".
I was on some social media site today and noted that there are some controversies going on where I only ever see the pushback and entirely infer that the people holding the opposite stance do exist, but they never show up in my channels. This is not unexpected in an algorithmically curated info landscape... but it's kind of bad and dangerous.
Ditto for only ever being served media based on the media I already like. Again, obvious but important: that's decidedly NOT how I got to like the media I already like.
- Comment on Steam Replay is live and notes only 14% "of playtime spent by all Steam users" was for 2025 releases 6 days ago:
I've said this elsewhere, but December is quickly becoming the time of the year when all the corpos tell us just exactly how much they spy on us and we all collectively go "Cool!" and tell each other about it for some reason.
FWIW, the median number of games played is four. Not forty, not fourteen, just four. If we're going to get spyware stats, at least let's put them in context. As it turns out, half of all Steam users are only playing the one game (given the numbers we know on concurrents, that'd be CS2/DOTA/PUBG or Apex, in most cases.
The play-everything, strong opinion haver user is a fraction of the userbase.
Also interesting, Steam is telling people how their playtime splits between Windows/Deck/Non-Deck Linux... but they pointedly don't share those stats platform-wide. Sometimes silence is data, too.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
I don't think an outright ban would be acceptable at all or grounded in any kind of proportionality. It's one thing to use gambling as a guilt-by-association thing, but if gambling isn't outright illegal even in that somewhat fallacious interpretation an outright ban would be absurd.
Which is something I feel a lot of the people rallying against this practice often didn't think through, but hey.
I still disagree with your interpretation of that literature review.
This systematic literature review analyzes 190 empirical studies published between 2012 and 2023, revealing nuanced findings. Regarding compliance, 41% of studies reported high compliance levels, 29% low compliance, and 29% inconclusive results. For effectiveness in achieving regulatory goals, 44% found self-regulation effective, 33% ineffective, and 24% inconclusive.
Our review also finds that the presence of intermediaries such as industry associations, third-party auditors, and NGOs, along with certain types of state involvement, tends to enhance self-regulation outcomes.
That's less "it's a crapshoot" and more "it generally works, especially if there is an overisght body".
Which in this case there absolutely is, given that this all slots into pre-existing age ratings and content warnings. Your misgivings don't line up with the data you provide and don't line up with pre-existing analogous self-regulation.
I've seen nothing to suggest this is any more problematic than either other types of monetization or other types of content restriction, and the big differentiator between violent/sexual content and this seems to be whether the segment of the userbase that posts online likes it as a matter of creative opinion.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
OK, if you want to play it like that, let me start by challenging a couple of assumptions.
First, the relevance of linking loot boxes to problem gambling. Ultimately gambling is not illegal, so this doesn't inherently suggest that the situation demands new legislation. The worst case scenario here is loot boxes are made analogous to gambling, which is presumably already as regulated as it's going to get on each territory. There's a lot more to question there, as there was on all the frankly sloppy analysis on the links of gaming to violence in the 90s, but there is an implication at the core of the attempt to link them in the first place that I don't think is justified.
Second, I dispute the need for them being on the wane predating your gate for legislation. For one thing, you're not being explicit about when "regulation" by your definition starts. By the way you've sourced it you can arbitrarily choose any point in time. For another, it makes sense that regulation and self-regulation would happen in parallel. Ultimately bad PR and negative research motivates both public and private action. Again I refer to the 90s violent game panic. If the probes on gaming violence motivated the creation of age ratings agencies for gaming, does that mean the age ratings weren't enough of a mitigation and they should have deployed anti-violence legislation? I'm going to pretty strongly argue that's not the case.
Also, I feel you're misrepresenting the metastudy you provide on the results of self regulation. High compliance/high effectiveness is the biggest segment on all counts. Granted, on roughly half of the studies, but a lot more studies find self-regulation to work than not, by that metric. Why is "a small but replicable correlation" such a concern but a majority of studies finding self-regulation is highly effective a mixed result you don't trust? Seems to me you're not treating all the references you're using the same way.
FWIW, I find this conversation not particularly productive because, frankly, with these things the literature gets to be a huge mess. Again, my reference is the 90s violence campaigns, where so many terrible papers were being funded and published the academic conversation became entirely impractical. The fact is gaming did need some age ratings standard and it made sense for national agencies to exist to manage them. And it makes sense for those same agencies to have explicit policies not just on loot boxes, but on all in-game monetization. The industry needs best practices and safeguards. And the public, incidentally, needs a LOT more awareness of why self-declaring age in accounts is important and what safeguards are already in place as it is, because there is a ton of parental control and underage protection that kicks in but nobody is particularly aware of.
But instead gamers whose concern with loot boxes is primarily artistic have been rooting for overreach in hopes the result is games they like more. I find that risky and problematic, and the idea of Brazil's government passing wide-ranging age verfication regulation and having English-speaking media and social media report on it based on a mostly reasonable mandate of loot box games carrying an 18+ rating more concerning than any of the underlying issues being addressed.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
Well, no, it can be a report of the authors of the study, but if they don't publish the study I don't know what they're talking about. I didn't poke around much, because if all my security is blocking content and blaring warnings it's probably not a great idea, but at a glance in the direct link I didn't find a link to the contents of the report proper.
To your question, it wouldn't change whether loot boxes are gambling, in that my position is that they are not regardless. It also wouldn't change whether they're worth regulating, in that my position is age ratings agencies should have a policy about it, but that's about it.
But in practical and political terms that's not what originated the panic in the first place, so whether the presence of loot boxes is growing or shrinking does go towards whether the PR impact of abusive practices and self-regulation is sufficient to address the issue.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
That site raises so many flags on my security software, but I went ahead and opened it elsewhere and... can't find a source. What is "a recent study"? 2024? 2020? Do you have a primary source?
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
And we do if you try to buy porn in a bookstore. We still don't like upending the entire framework of the Internet for the sake of replicating that online. Which is exactly what's happening here. The loot box thing is an afterthought that mandates a specific age rating for games that include them and nothing else. Porn is the main focus of the legislation.
And I disagree on implementing internet-wide ID checks for the sake of keeping kids away from porn. Hard.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
Less than what?
Who is still doing loot boxes? Valve, for sure, they still have them on CounterStrike, sports games and then... what? Hearthstone/Magic and that type of CCG stuff and... I guess mobile gacha RPGs?
Everybody else is doing battle passes now.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
So is alcohol and I will have a beer regardless of what you or anybody else thinks about it. Screw you, you don't get to baby my addictions, I'm a big boy.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
Super hard disagree. I do like me some Magic the Gathering and CCGs in general. If anything I'm say more concerned with the increasing trend of real world blind pack collectibles aimed exclusively at kids than I am with online loot boxes, which is something most of the industry has abandoned anyway after the panic went viral.
But nope, absolutely not. Loot boxes aren't worth forcing online age verification any more than porn was a few months ago when we were all mad because the UK did it. And absolutely no, I am an adult and if I want to gamble online, let alone buy loot boxes in a videogame, I absolutely should be happy to do that.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
Yeeeeah, you're way less down on age verification on principle than I do.
You're also more down on loot boxes than I am, in that I still dispute the equivalence to gambling. It's not absurd, but it requires ignoring a lot of nuance.
Still, the problem I have with this situation in general is that the loot box element (which isn't that heavy, it mostly establishes by law that loot boxes will make a game be automatically listed as 18 and up) is masking the mandatory age verification element. And the mandatory age verification is baaaad. It effectively does the magical wishful tech thinking thing we've been seeing recently elsewhere where it just... says it should be private and comply with privacy regulations but doesn't explain how that's possible, while at the same time demanding that every single store and service provider both design a perfect age verification system AND somehow magic up an API to share that information with each game while remaining entirely private. Which is pretty much impossible.
But nobody is talking about that, everybody just wants to dunk on loot boxes. Like four years too late, because most of the industry saw the writing on the wall and moved on to battle passes instead on the PR hit alone.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
I wrote a first response referencing the one mention I had found of loot boxes, but you are correct, I missed that they did include one in the definitions section.
IV – caixa de recompensa: funcionalidade disponível em certos jogos eletrônicos que permite a aquisição, mediante pagamento, pelo jogador, de itens virtuais consumíveis ou de vantagens aleatórias, resgatáveis pelo jogador ou usuário, sem conhecimento prévio de seu conteúdo ou garantia de sua efetiva utilidade;
So yeah, you are right, they do define it as paid. Carry on.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
Art. 20. São vedadas as caixas de recompensa (loot boxes) oferecidas em jogos eletrônicos direcionados a crianças e a adolescentes ou de acesso provável por eles, nos termos da respectiva classificação indicativa.
Not as far as I can tell. This translates to "Loot boxes offered in electronic games aimed at children and teenagers or likely to be accessed by them, in the terms of the corresponding age rating".
You can argue that "offered" here specifically implies "offered for purchase", but... I mean, my Brazilian Portuguese isn't perfect, but I don't think that's explicitly the case, the word means what you think it means in English. It'd be a problem of hermeneutics at that point.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
For those protections to have any effect in Brazil, however, they'll necessitate the usage of age-verification mechanisms. Previously, Brazilian law had considered it sufficient for users of digital services to self-declare their age. The new law, however, requires the providers of those services to "take proportionate, auditable and technically secure measures to assess the age or age range of users."
Seriously, read things before reacting to them.
It's been decades of social media and centuries of press. How have we not learned about this as a society?
I mean, if you're cool with this, then you're cool with this and we disagree, but I'm gonna say you probably were going out of the headline alone.
- Comment on Brazil's president has signed a ban on selling loot boxes to minors as part of a larger online child safety law 2 months ago:
Said this elsewhere, but it seems to me a bigger story that it also mandates age verification for 18 plus content, including porn and at the platform level.
Steam needs to verify your age now if it wants to carry porn games.
And I do have problems with loot boxes, in that it doesn't qualify the boxes having to be paid, so technically Diablo II should be a 18+ game, along with every single RPG in existence. I have to assume courts or downstream definitions will do a sanity check on that, because the law they passed makes zero qualifiers, it just says "loot boxes".
So... maybe look into what they passed before being too celebratory about it?
- Comment on Does anyone else use their steam deck as a PC? How's it? 2 months ago:
I mean... I own both a LCD and an OLED Deck.
I would absolutely not use it as a computer without a dock and I certainly wouldn't use it as a media player.
Other handhelds maaaaybe. The Legion Go has a stand and detachable controllers, so it could be a thing if it didn't have the worst speakers ever devised by a human being. The GPD Win 4, the GPD Win Mini, the Ayaneo Slide and the Aya Flip all have some semblance of a keyboard, so you can get away with some stuff you can't on the Deck or the Ally. I don't think they make sense as a main computing device for the money, though, as they don't have even the Deck's low entry point as an excuse.
FWIW, the optical nub on the Win 4 is the best pointer device in any of these, and even with that and the physical keyboard I still wouldn't use it to replace a laptop for media consumption if given the option. If I had a single device I could pick up I would sooner look into the ASUS Flow line of convertibles than into any current handheld, although you can certainly get a much cheaper all-rounder laptop than that.
- Comment on Does anyone else use their steam deck as a PC? How's it? 2 months ago:
Cool, so you really really wanted a handheld.
Which is fine. Go nuts. Love me a handheld.
But "the best all rounder" it definitely is not. There is a big difference between needing a dock, a monitor, a keyboard and a mouse versus just a mouse for fundamentally the same experience. If you're into the ergonomics of a separate monitor then you're looking for something else than "an all rounder", you're looking for a desktop replacement specifically. That's not the same thing. And then I'd say the Deck still wouldn't be how I fix that problem, honestly.
Also, FWIW, I don't think the Deck is particularly good at anything that is not gaming. The 800p screen is not good enough for media consumption, specially given that the thing has no easy way to handle it other than gripping it with both hands. No stand, no easy way to one-hand it, tiny screen... Yeah, not how you want to watch a movie. Especially not on the LCD model, which is the only one under 500.
I agree that it's a good cheap PC handheld. I don't think it's anything but that, though. If it's the only device you can afford I genuinely don't think it makes much sense, and in almost every other circumstance either spending more on a better desktop/laptop or splitting your budget between a cheaper work PC and a Deck is a better solution.
I think if you're considering a Deck or a console it's a different conversation, but as your main computing device? Yeah, no, not a recommendation from me at all.
- Comment on Does anyone else use their steam deck as a PC? How's it? 2 months ago:
That's a bad use case, honestly. I mean, sure, you can do it, but... why?
The deck starts at 400 bucks (yeah, I know there's a sale now, that's not the base price). And it comes with 256 Gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM. You need a keyboard, mouse, monitor and dock to use it as a desktop PC, and now... well, it's a desktop PC, you can't move that set up with you to do anything other than play games.
What you want is... you know, a laptop. If you want some gaming ASUS will throw in a dedicated GPU for the price of all that loose hardware. And, you know, your keyboard and monitor can go in your backpack instead of being locked to a desk.
It's fine if you really really want a handheld and your other tasks are a secondary concern, but if you can only afford one cheap device and you want an all-rounder to do both desktop replacement and on-the-go entertainment you want a laptop.
- Comment on Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck 3 months ago:
You went for an Intel handheld? I salute you, sir, that's a deep cut.
As one of the five people on the planet who owns an Intel GPU I firmly believe we are in a very exclusive club that will one day do wonders for hardware archaeology.
- Comment on Gaming handheld prices are out of control, except for the Steam Deck 3 months ago:
Sure. Maybe? The Deck isn't that expensive, and despite being relatively limited runs it definitely has some benefits from scale. For one it's a custom APU, so you have to assume there's a specific deal with AMD.
Valve is certainly a first party that benefits from software sales primarily, so it makes sense for them to go to some lengths to invest in bringing people over, but I'm not sure that they are actively subsidizing the Deck, the price seems pretty reasonable. I'm sure they don't make a ton of money from it, though, so they definitely get to thin those margins up a LOT compared with the pure hardware manufacturers, let alone with the tiny companies making handhelds one at a time.